Posts filed under 'audition'
I ran a workshop recently about hiring for an agile team, and one of the people learning to interview said, “I want a candidate who can take criticism.” I replied, “Don’t you mean feedback?” He asked, “What’s the difference?”
Oh, boy. Plenty. Criticism is when you you’re looking at a piece of code and you say, “This seems brain dead.” But if you say, “I’m confused by this piece of code,” you’ve provided me some feedback. I guarantee you, you want candidates who can take feedback.
So, if you want to know if a candidate can take feedback, here are some possible interview questions:
- “Have you recently been in a position where someone reviewed your work?” (wait for a yes answer.) “What happened?”
- Offer to work with the candidate in an audition (possibly pairing) and review as you go.
- Ask for feedback on some of you work as part of an audition and see how the candidate provides feedback.
- “How do you know your work is good?” Wait and see where the question goes. You might be able to follow up with a question such as, “Is there a way you prefer feedback on your work?”
Asking candidates about their ability to take feedback is useful. Asking about criticism is not.
March 26th, 2008
A behavioral audition is one where youw ant to see some specific candidate behaviors. Management auditions typically fall into this category. But especially if you’re hiring for an agile team, you might want to see how a candidate exhibits behaviors, such as coaching, feedback, how the person participates in a standup meeting or in a retrospective.If you want to see some specific behaviors, first, return to your job analysis. What are those essential technical and non-technical skills? Can you make a behavioral audition around those skills?You might want to see if the candidate will be a smooth addition to a team or a disruptive addition. In that case, you ask the candidate to do some work with one or more members of the team. You’ll ask the candidate how that work went, and you’ll need to debrief the members of your team (with open-ended questions) about what it was like to work with the candidate.Try a focused conversation for the debrief:
- What stood out for you?
- Where were you challenged?
- What insights do you have about this candidate?
- What do you recommend we do with this candidate?
Behavioral auditions are the most difficult to design. In my experience, you can see the behaviors if you use a technical audition, you are likely to see the behaviors you want to see. But to know what you want to see, you’ve got to do a job analysis.
Labels: audition, job analysis
July 30th, 2007
A management audition is similar to a technical audition, but because the functional skills are so different, and because senior technical people may also require some management capability, I see these as two different kinds of auditions.As usual, your mileage may vary. Here are some possible management auditions:
- Facilitate a meeting
- Give a presentation
- Analyze some budget information. Don’t forget to ask what they would do with that budget and why
- Organize a project portfolio
- Develop an audition for a manager. (ok, that’s slightly evil
If you have other good ideas, please comment away.
Labels: audition, interview
July 27th, 2007
In his comment, John asked about auditions for a business analyst. The audition will vary, depending on the kind of projects you do. Here are some possibilities:
- For a more serial lifecycle, you could ask a BA to help elicit requirements. You’d listen to the way the candidate interviewed, if the candidate interrupted the speaker, if the candidate asked meta questions.
- For a more agile lifecycle, you could ask the candidate to make user stories from bullet lists of requirements.
- For any lifecycle, ask the candidate to explain his or her favorite way to express requirements. Then take a product and ask the candidate to write down the requirements for that product.
Make sure your audition matches your environment. I might not have described something useful for you, so adapt my suggestions.
Labels: audition, interview
July 24th, 2007
If you’re thinking about auditions, consider a “technical” audition for any of your open positions. A technical audition provides you a little insight into a candidate’s functional skills.If you’re hiring a developer, ask the candidate to extend a design, or find a problem and design a solution. You could ask a tester to test a piece of a product, or a particular set of features.A particularly good technical audition is one where you always ask the candidates (for a certain role) to perform the same kind of work. Ask each developer to write some kind of code, or ask a tester to test some specific product. (Don’t vary the task between candidates.)You can use these auditions for a phone screen or an in-person interview.Consider technical auditions the minimum entry point for auditions. You’ll learn a lot about a candidate with this audition.
Labels: audition
July 23rd, 2007
I’m planning to do a series on audition, and the first one is the idea that every candidate enjoys an audition of the hiring manager, team, and company. That’s because every time you organize an interview, ask a question, or do anything at all, the candidate can watch you work. That’s an audition.
Labels: audition, interview
July 11th, 2007
Last week at the Agile conference, a participant in my “Hiring for an Agile Team” session asked how to know if the people she was interviewing–who had no experience as part of an agile team–might actually work in the team. As she said, “I can’t wait for the perfect person. I can train, but I need people who are capable of doing the work even if they haven’t done it before.”
Drum roll, please. This is exactly why auditions are a necessary part of your interviewing toolbox. I suggested that she first define the behaviors she needed to see. In this case, it’s the ability to do test-driven development. I suggested she explain test-driven development. I also suggested that during the phone screen or emails setting up the interview that she point candidates to articles she particularly likes about test-driven development. (I suggested she consider testdriven.com or Keith Ray’s blog.) Now the candidate knows to expect an audition, even if it’s something the candidate hasn’t done before.
During the interview, ask the candidate to design something–something similar to your product is best, but you can use an open source product, or even something like a factorial function. The key is to explain that you’ll check in every five minutes to see how the candidate is doing. When you check in, ask to see the tests and the code. Say, “Thank you, I’ll check back later” and walk away. As you check in, you can see if the just the code is growing, or if the tests and the code are growing together.
Not everyone can teach him or herself test-driven development. The key with this audition is to look for forward progress, not perfection. In my opinion, this audition is better than a hypothetical question.And, in case you’re wondering, no, I suggested a whole bunch of questions she could ask too, about ability to learn skills and adaptability. But I suspect that starting with this kind of an audition will help clarify whether the candidate could do the work at all. Always a useful thing to know.
August 1st, 2006
Take a look at HBS’s Working Knowledge,Hiring for Executive Intelligence. Some quotes that rocked my world:
IQ test questions don’t assess the practical, on-your-feet thinking skills needed in business. What’s more, these tests have been repeatedly accused of racial and gender bias. Yet, despite these very real shortcomings, IQ tests are still a better predictor of managerial success than any other assessment tool. [HUH??? --JR]Because each question in the behavioral interview essentially assesses the same qualities, there’s no need for the grueling three-to-four-hour sessions favored by hiring managers today. They need only ask enough questions to get a reliable appraisal of the candidate’s work experience, job knowledge, and social skills. [Excuse me, but that's not been my experience --JR]Despite their advantages, behavioral interviews really only establish a candidate’s minimum qualifications; they don’t identify star talent. [Of course behavior-descriptions are not enough by themselves. --JR]
The article goes on to say …tests should focus on the particular cognitive subjects associated with executive work: accomplishing tasks, working with and through others, and judging oneself.
Ok, so now the good folks who publish in HBR agree that auditions are key to evaluating a executive’s potential for a position. The example they use is actually a good example.
Auditions for senior management are harder to develop than auditions for technical staff and first- and mid-level managers, but they are certainly not impossible. Any audition that requires the exec to disclose the questions he/she has about the circumstances and leading to a decision and the ability to make a decision is useful. Executive auditions do look more like case studies and need to be evaluated that way.
December 6th, 2005
I received an email from a reader today, along with an outline of their hiring process. They spend about 6-8 hours with each candidate, most of which is a series of auditions. They spend maybe an hour with behavior-description questions.
These folks have an atypical problem–they’re hiring for consultants, so they need to know how the consultant will work. What I find fascinating is the response from a candidate, “in NYC people get hired pretty much based on a handshake so why should I bother to do any amount of the work you are asking for.”
Ahem. I have some NYC clients and colleagues, and that is not their experience. And, if a candidate pushes back that much when I’m looking for guaranteed ability to perform a particular job, I’m pretty sure I don’t want that candidate.
On the other hand, there’s not a lot of interaction with a variety of people in the consulting company, and I would change that. 6-8 hours of auditions can look a lot like the interviewer is trying to get the candidate to work for free, something hiring managers want to avoid.The number of and time spent in auditions does depend on what you want. For most organizations, one brief audition before the in-person interview and one 30-45 minute audition during the interview is sufficient. The more strategic the person, (i.e. the higher in management, the more key the position), the more auditions you may need. But don’t neglect the in-person interview. The interview, especially with behavior-description questions will create rapport and start to build a relationship with a candidate, something auditions do not do.
November 21st, 2005
I spoke at Boston SPIN last night, and facilitated the hiring initiative roundtable before the main presentation. One of the roundtable participants explained that he was looking for entry-level testers. And, since no one (okay, not quite no one, but almost no one) teaches testing in college, he wanted to develop an audition to see if people would like testing. He doesn’t want to hire people as testers who don’t want to be testers.
I suggested he ask candidates to sit down with the product and test. Give the candidates a pencil and paper and blank defect reports. Let the candidate test for 20-30 minutes. At the end, debrief the candidate.Some debriefing questions:
- What did you notice about the testing?
- Some (or all) of these questions:
- What did you find challenging about the testing?
- What was easy?
- What did you enjoy the most?
- What did you enjoy the least?
- What issues did your testing raise?
- Can you see yourself testing each day? In what circumstances?
These questions follow the The Art of Focused Conversation: objective questions, reflective questions, interpretive questions, and decisional questions.In this case, it’s not the audition that’s tricky to develop, but debriefing the audition. But, especially if you’re considering hiring entry-level people for roles they haven’t considered, debriefing could be a critical part of the audition.
I’ve also applied the
Blog Housekeeping changes to this blog. Let me know if you have trouble.
June 22nd, 2005
Previous Posts